Week. Earlier today on capitol hill, House Speaker paul ryan and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi spoke with reporters about the government funding and health care bills. As well as the trump administrations tax proposal announced yesterday. Up next here on cspan3, speaker ryan followed by minority leader pelosi. Are you ready, archer . Ready. What sticker . Oh, yeah. I havent had one of those in a long time. Good morning, everybody. First i want to welcome all our special guests today. I think its great to see you here and its great that you get to see the work your parents do, but dont tell them this but theyre actually kind of good at their jobs. One of those your daughters . Yep. So cute. You had one last year with us. This is abbys first time. Very cool. I digress. Sorry. Later today, the president will sign an executive order to improve accountability at the va. Under the Obama Administration, not nearly enough was done to hold bureaucrats accountable for failing veterans at va. Despite propses to clean things up, only a smattering of people were moved out of their jobs and held accountable. Last month, the house passed the va accountability act to make it easier to bring the kind of steady leadership that Va Medical Centers so desperately need. And last week, the president signed legislation to reduce out of pocket costs for veterans and to promote besser access to care. These are all very positive steps to deliver the kind of fundamental reform that is needed at the va. This adds to what has already been an incredibly active first 100 days. Under the president s leadership, we have cut red tape at record levels, cutting red tape saves families dollars, it saves businesses jobs. In fact, we have saved families and businesses more than 67 billion just already. Yesterday, the administration put out its principles for pro growth tax reform. Thats the next step toward overlawing our tax code and we continue to make progress in our work to repeal and replace obamacare. We posted an amendment to the American Health care act yesterday. This was the result of constructive conversations among our members that focused how we can do more to lower costs for everyone. What this amendment does is give states more flexibility and tools to reduce premiums and increase choices and it does this while maintaining and preserving protections for people with preexisting conditions. This is the important point. Those protections remain on the books even as we add new ones. The goal here is to give states greater flexibility if they want it to lower premiums. Abnot made any decisions on a vote but this is more progress and we will continue our progress and our work to repeal and replace obamacare. Now, im sure some of you have questions. Are there any young people who have questions . Yeah, manu, no. Sorry. All right. Anybody else have any questions . Mike, yeah. Reporter mr. Speaker how close are you on health care . And what are your reassurances to moderate whos maybe liked the original plan or are worried about the new one. I think were making very good progress. Were going to go when we have the votes. But thats the decision well make when we have it. Something tells me youll probably be the first to know when that happens. I would argue this is a bill that a moderate would plor likely want to support. Some people were concerned about ehbs. Ehbs were taken out of the bill, essential Health Benefits were taken out of the earlier draft and now put back in. Theyre in the federal law and a state would have to find a waiver for essential Health Benefits. If anything, this puts more federal protections in. On preexisting conditions, every states a little different. In wisconsin, we had a high risk pool that worked really well and i think we ought to be given the kind of flexibility to tailor our markets that work for us in wisconsin because the Wisconsin Health care system is different than say the new york Health Care System or the vermont Health Care System. That just makes sense. But even if a state gets a waiver, in are multiple layers of preexisting condition protections like continuous conch. If you have a Health Care Problem and you have Health Insurance, you cant be denied or rated for Higher Health care costs. If you switch to another plan and keep your coverage, the same protections apply even if your state gets a waiver. The more important point is why this amendment is a step in the right dekz direction is we believe the smarter way to the go on getting premiums down and protecting people with preexisting conditions is have federal and state support for people who are sick with greater subsidies so that everybody else doesnt have to bear the costs in their insurance pools. 1 of the people in the individual market drive 23 of the costs. So if we directly support that catastrophic coverage reinsurance on top of insurance, youre lowering everyone elses prices and making it easier for people to afford Quality Health insurance and youre guaranteeing that that person who has Catastrophic Health care costs who has a preexisting condition or gets really sick gets the coverage they need. We think its a really good step in the right direction. Were having very productive conversations with our members and feel like were on the right track. Well announce when we have a vote. Is there pressure to vote by the president s 100th day. We want to go when were ready. This is a bottomup process. It takes time to do that. Were doing big things. I talked about 200days because i thought the kind of agenda that were attempting to put together here overhauling health care, overhauling the tax system, rebuilding our military, securing the border, those take more than a few months. They take a long time, at least a year. Thats why were working on the path to get it right and not contain is to some artificial deadline. Nancy. Reporter high risk pools dont have the greatest track record. In wisconsin your high risk pool was great for the people on it, but it was still unaffordable for a lot of other people, wasnt it. No, it was pretty darn good. But this add federal funding to it now. Think of high risk pools. There were states that had high risk pools reinsurance mechan m mechanisms or risk sharing like the main plan. None had any federal funding to it. None of them had had he federal resources. This takes that idea and adds federal resources to make sure it works even better and hhs will coordinate with those states to make sure they have good mechanisms in place. Wyoming had a good one, utah had a good one, Washington State had a good one. Maine had a good one. We had a good one. They work and now that well be adding federal funding to it, theyll work even better and you can lower prices more. Can you reassure people with preexisting conditions they wont be worse off. They will be better off under our plan. Thats the goal. The problem with obamacare is people get one choice at best in a third of all the keep thes in america. Five states you got one plan to choose from. Thats not very good to have just a monopoly giving you Health Insurance our job is to make sure people get more choices and by getting more choices you can get better Quality Health insurance and lower prices and we preserve those protections for people with preexisting conditions. Thats what this bill an cleaves and we think its going to be a big improvement on the status quo collapsing before us. Thank you, mr. Speaker. Steny hoyer and democrats say they will uhoh. Shes. I was just repeating what she said. Not what you said. Democrats are saying they will withhold votes for a funding bill. She said something to me about that. Will you press forward with a vote this week on Obamacare Repeal . Whats your reaction to that and can you pass a funding bill with just republican votes . I would be shocked they would want to see a Government Shutdown. Lets take a step back. The reason this government funding bill is not ready is because democrats have been dragging their feet. Periodically they havent shown up for negotiations. So the reason we need an extension in the first place is because democrats are dragging their feet. Even if we get an agreement lets just say in ten minutes, we cant process the paperwork that long and we have a threeday rule. People need to be able to read the bill. So it inevitably under any scenario or circumstance requires a shortterm extension and im confident well be able to pass a shortterm extension. I would be shocked the democrats would want to create a Government Shutdown because they have been dragging their feet. Casey. Mr. Speaker back to health care for a moment. With all the changes that you have made that have led to the Freedom Caucus getting on board, should this be an easy yes vote for the moderate members of congress. Yeah, tom mcarthur is the leading moderate in the congress. Its his amendment. Frustrated some of his fellow moderate colleagues. I dont know if thats the case. Tom has an entire career working in insurance understanding math and science of insurance has come up with a very innovative anticipate we think works very well. It gets to where we all want to go. We want to bring down costs, preserve protections for people with preexisting conditions and respect the fact that states you know have different issues, Different Health care marketplaces and give states greater flex be the so they can get the maximum reduction in policies and premiums and so that we can get the best possible Health Care System. What weve learned is a cookie cutter one size fits all Health Care System doesnt work for america. As the a diversity country. Different states have different rules and systems. We need 0 respect that and thats what this anticipate does. Hes a cochair of the tuesday group. Good shot archer. Hes one of the leading sorry. It was a good shot. That was pretty cool. One of the leading members of the tuesday group. This is basically a coalescing thing. Arent there potentially at risk here. Peoples seats are at risk if we dont do what we said we would do. We all campaigned on repealing and replacing this law that is collapsing. The American Health care system is in peril right now. We have a moral obligation to prevent people from getting hurt to stop damage from being continued. And we promise that we would do this. If you violate your promise, if you admit the sin of hypocracy in politics, thats a greater risk to a persons seat. In the back. Subsidies, have you said that the administration should continue those payments. You in fact sued the Obama Administration for that exact thing. Omb is saying this is an issue that Congress Needs to deal with. You said you dont want to deal in the spending bill with it. Thats the future of these because it seems like the white house and House Republicans are on different pages . Were in litigation. Only that its a difference between the separation of power. So were in existing litigation and the white house, the administrations been making that payments while thats still pending. I think the white house made comments on this. Once the lawsuit i wont speculate. I dont know what the outcome will be. Thank you. Ill go back to you next. Just jumped in front of you. I didnt see you. The House Oversight committee released documents raising concerns of michael flynn. Im wondering in his dfailure t disclosure payments, are you concerned about the yvetting procedures and hiring to this position to begin with . I dont know whether he did or did not. This ic is part of our ongoing investigation. Well find the answer to that question through an investigation. Im not going to prejudge a conclusion. Yeah . On the miners benefits, permanently extended . I wont get into i believe the Health Benefits should be extended. I wont insert myself in ongoing negotiations about the length of this. Last question. The tax foundation, their estimates of tax reform and effective tax cuts, you decided them on the republican side pretty often. An assumption is no crowdout effect of rising debts as a part of that. Im curious whether you in the past said you believe the rising debt, entitlement programs and spending will have a drag on economic growth. Is there a can you square that circle . Its all about interest rates, right, jonathan . I think under models you assume interest rates. Do they go above their normal rates or do they go higher because of debt and deficits . Crowding out investment. I do believe that we have to have fiscal discipline in addition to economic growth. You know me well. I think that means reforming the entitlement programs. I think this is extremely important if youre going to lower fiscal exposure, help close the dead. A biggest driver of debt is Health Inflation so if we have a patient Health Care System that is restored by reviving the individual market, thats one of the greatest things to do to bring down high Health Care Costs and close the debt and the deficit. I believe you have to have comprehensive entitlement reforms with tax reform to get the beth of both wormds which is getting the debt under control, getting people back to work and faster revenues. That was the last one . Okay. Its my turn to ask a question. How many junior reporters do we have here today including photographers . Okay. Why dont we all get a photo . Is this where nancy did it . Over here . Been a long time. Nobody make faces. All right . Great job, guys. Thank you. [ inaudible ] good seeing you guys